Both Sides Firm on "Prepackaged, Corporate Junk-Food Sales"

As the debate over bake sales rages on—with a City Hall "bake-in" scheduled for tomorrow—the Times takes a close look at both sides of the bitter butter battle. In one camp there's the Education Department, which has banned homemade treats in favor of fresh fruit and vegetables and a prescribed list of low-cal packaged chips and cookies. Then there are the parents who say schools are cutting out an important income source, while encouraging the harmful consumption of processed food. Laura Shapiro, a food writer and historian, says the debate is an historical one, dating back to the rise of big food companies during WII: "That was the start of the war between the food industry and American home cooks, which this bake-sale flap shows is not over,”

The new Department of Education regulations [pdf] allow regular bake sales with homemade goods just once a month, or after 6 p.m. on weekdays. The city says obesity is the problem it's attempting to fix, and insists the parents have it all wrong.
“We’re not saying you should eat Doritos,” said Eric Goldstein, chief executive of School Food and Transportation for the Department of Education. “If you want to send in with your child 15 cupcakes you can do so. That probably wouldn’t be advisable. But what we’re talking about is the selling of food." Ideally, says the department, food sales would go away altogether, replaced by sales of jewelry, crafts or something else with zero caloric content.

But PTAs claim the sales are not just a good source of funding for arts programs and other extras (one mom says sale money sent 11 students to see Mayan ruins in Mexico last year); they build community. “Everybody contributes, everybody feels more like they are part of the school community,” said one baker of carrot cupcakes and mini spanakopita. “They try things that other people have baked. In such a big city it’s really nice to have that small community feeling.” Much nicer than with a “prepackaged, corporate junk-food sale,” as one parent suggested the new fundraisers be called.

Meanwhile Shapiro says the issue goes further than the community, accusing the DOE of implementing “exactly the kind of thinking that sent us down the road of packaged, industrial junk food in the first place.”